The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus capable of reproducing an original image. In particular, the present invention relates to an image forming apparatus that is capable of selectively erasing portions of the original image to be reproduced.
Original images to be reproduced often contain unnecessary or confidential information that the user does not want to appear in the reproduced image. Accordingly, it would be useful to provide an image forming apparatus having a selective erase capability which enables the user to selectively block out or erase portions of the original image from the reproduced image. An example of an image forming apparatus that includes an erase capability is provided in U.S. Pat. No. 4,806,976 issued to Kato et al. It is desirable, however, to provide a selective erase capability wherein a high degree of resolution is achieved in defining the selective erase field and a plurality of selective erase fields can be specified.